


Drag Me Out Alive

by Carmenlire



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Demon Deals, Immortality, M/M, Prophetic Dreams, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 07:03:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17638055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: “You’ll know who I am soon enough, shadowhunter. You have a choice to make and I will only offer my assistance once. I know you, you see,” he taunts softly. “You would blow up the very ground you stand upon to save those you love and someone new has wriggled their way into your good graces.”“We’ve met before? Funny how I don’t remember you.” Alec’s voice whips through the air, quiet yet contemptuous.The man leans close and raises his cane to tip Alec’s chin up. “One day, you’ll come to me to save him and I will do it-- for the right price. We’ll see what happens on that fateful day.”





	Drag Me Out Alive

He’s always had dreams.

They aren’t visions-- he insists to himself that he just has a vivid imagination, that his life gives itself over to dreamscapes that seem fantastical and too good to be true and altogether _unrealistic_.

Still. There’s a part of himself that just can’t help but wonder if the dreams are part premonition, part threat.

When he was younger, Izzy had persuaded him to sneak out of the Institute one fall evening. The wind had been bitterly cold and leaves had danced along the pavement as they’d walked down abandoned sidewalks. For New York, there had been a noticeable lack of people milling about but Alec had shrugged it off and chalked it up to the fact that it was one of the coldest days of the season so far.

Isabelle had led them unerringly to a psychic’s parlor. Alec had scoffed-- couldn’t help but make his opinion on their destination clear-- but Izzy had just elbowed him in the side and declared that according to Google, this was the best place in the city to see one’s future.

 _Who the hell would want to know their future_ , Alec had groused. _We’re shadowhunters, Iz, and I’d rather not know that I’m going to die when I’m barely out of the Academy_.

Rolling her eyes, Isabelle had walked backwards towards the door to the building. She’d looked at Alec, equal parts exasperation and excitement.

 _That’s the beauty of it, Big Brother. There’s a whole world out there just waiting for us and I want to make the most of it_.

With a long suffering sigh that they were both overwhelmingly familiar with, Alec had followed his sister inside.

The door creaked on its hinges. A washed out gray, Alec had taken one look at the faded sign and felt something slither up his spine. _Shamdon’s Sight_.

The name isn’t familiar and Alec can’t place the etymology, even though he’s fluent in a number of languages, both demonic and mundane.

Shaking his head impatiently, Alec scolds himself. Isabelle just wanted to get her palm read and this whole damn thing is nothing but a farce.

Try as he might, Alec can’t quite convince himself that he’s telling the truth.

The room is dark and smells of spice and incense and dust. Everything looks cheap, well-used. Whoever Shamdon is, they aren’t making a lot of money and that tells Alec all he needs to know.

They walk past the empty reception area and head directly to one of the side rooms. There’s a woman there and Alec’s eyes almost pass her by before he realizes.

She looks perfectly nondescript. Her face folds into a million wrinkles and her rouge borders on obscene. Lipstick runs into the crevices next to her lips and her eyes are sunken in but hold unfathomable depths. Across the room, they meet Alec’s and his breath catches for a split second.

 _It’s all part of an act_ , he tells himself. This woman dresses the part and appearances are everything in her line of work.

 _Welcome_ , she greets and gestures to one of the chairs across from her. She lays a lingering glance on Alec but moves on to Isabelle quickly enough, dismissing him.

 _I only work with one person at a time, darling. Leave us be and your companion will come get you when we’re done_.

Isabelle had urged Alec to leave without protest silently, glaring and gazing pointedly at the door with pleading eyes.

With a last glance, Alec had complied. He doesn’t know what it is but this entire place makes him uneasy. Dread wraps around his lungs no matter how much he tells himself to calm down. It doesn’t make sense and Alec’s never liked things that he couldn’t neatly compartmentalize.

He stands outside and sinks into the cold. Huddling in his leather jacket, he glares at his surroundings. He’s nineteen and feels ancient. His life rolls out before him, a long line of patrols and mission reports and hiding a piece of himself that’s more heartache than work.

Jace is a never-ending pain in his ass and he’s always worrying about Izzy, no matter that she’d kick his ass if she knew. His parents are always fighting-- he hears the hissed whispers and hushed arguments-- and he’s so damned tired most days that it’s a wonder he makes it out of bed.

He smiles but its sardonic. The dreams don’t help, he privately acknowledges. 

Since he was a boy, Alec’s dreamed. They always seem so vivid-- splashing colors and flashing images-- but as soon as he wakes, they disintegrate into fragmented memories. He only has impressions during the day: gold eyes, black veins, a pervasive sense of freedom. When he was a child, they were a comfort. At five years old, the dreams were an adventure. He’d imagined that he was a soldier come to slay the dragon and rescue his people.

As he grew older though, the dreams started morphing. When he’s in the grip of a dream, it’s all he knows-- his reality zeroes into the way the light hits an opaque vial, to raw screams that sound hauntingly like his own.

The dreams are ominous and chill him down to the bone because _he doesn’t know what they mean_. He’s never told anyone-- will never tell anyone what waits for him when he sleeps-- but no matter that there’s a part of him that’s afraid, there’s still a piece that feels drawn to the dreamscape.

The screams are cathartic, the way the vial absorbs the light entrancing. Alec has these dreams frighteningly regularly but they’re a comfort, too. They’ve been part of him since he was old enough to remember them and even if he’s never been able to put it all together, it’s a puzzle he never tires of.

Cold seeps through his jacket as Alec loses himself in the mystery. He’s startled, then, when the front door bangs open and Isabelle comes striding out. On the surface, she’s as calm as ever, but Alec can tell she’s shaken-- it’s in the tremors of her arms, the way she glances carefully at her surroundings.

_Are you okay?_

With a curt shrug, Isabelle looks back at the door and crosses her arms over her front. _I’m fine_ , she insists. _It’s just that_ . . .

Alec waits her out, in the meantime studying her carefully. Izzy is rarely rattled but whatever the fraud had told her had gotten under her skin.

She lets out a breath before meeting Alec’s eyes. _She told me that my hubris would be my downfall and that I’d find my love in the most unexpected of circumstances_.

Raising a brow, Alec had asked, _Did she give you a name? A description of this soulmate?_

Mouth a terse line, Izzy had responded, _All she’d say was that love takes many forms and that the line between friends is blurred_.

Alec had scoffed. _There you go, Iz, that’s a platitude if I’ve ever heard one. I hope you’re not paying attention to vague claims made by a charlatan_.

Glaring, Isabelle had shoved at his shoulder. _You go then, and tell me what she says doesn't feel like the truth_.

Rolling his eyes, Alec had pushed off from the brick wall and glared at his sister before entering the shop again.

The woman was right where’d he’d last seen her and he feels a pull towards her that he can’t quite explain. So, he tamps down the feeling and tells himself that it’s just his imagination and Izzy getting into his head.

He sits down and the old woman tracks his movements with sharp eyes.

_What is it that you want to know, young shadowhunter?_

Alec looks into her steady gaze and feels like she’s peering into his soul. Shifting uncomfortably on the wooden chair, he merely offers, _I want to know why I should believe anything you say_.

He waves away the fact that she knows he’s nephilim-- most psychics in the city had the sight and all it proves is that she has learned to make the most of her negligible gift.

The woman laughs warmly and sounds like someone half her age. It sounds weirdly familiar but Alec can’t place it and shakes his head when a headache starts to form.

 _You’re skeptical-- I like that. It means you won’t run to do anything rash, that your heart beats steady and stable_.

Leaning forward suddenly, she grabs Alec’s wrist in a formidable grip and her gaze sears into his. _I’ll tell you this, nephilim, you might prove yourself yet_.

Taken aback, Alec can only frown. He tenses in her grip but feels no give. It’s like iron bands around his wrist and he wonders what the hell kind of game she’s playing.

She studies him with a calculating air. Unease drips down his spine and he shivers in her hold.

 _Good_ , she says quietly. _You should be afraid. And do you know why, darling?_

Alec can’t explain it but that twisted term of endearment burrows its way into his chest, wraps around his heart and squeezes until it feels like he’s suffocating.

 _One day, we will meet again and when we do, you’ll have a choice to make. We’ll see if you’re so sure and steadfast when that day comes, Alexander_.

His wrist is released as suddenly as it was snatched and Alec stands quickly, the chair behind him crashing backwards to the floor.

It’s strange but he doesn’t feel threatened-- he doesn’t fear that presence, no matter how unsettling the encounter was.

The two of them stare at each other and Alec doesn’t say anything, doesn’t let his expression give anything away as he nods once and turns on his heel, heading toward the door.

Isabelle is waiting outside for him and he doesn’t pause to talk as he starts striding toward the Institute.

Izzy doesn’t say anything, seems to caught up in her own thoughts, and leaves Alec to his.

He doesn’t know who the hell that woman was or what she was trying to accomplish. All he knows is that she shouldn’t have gotten under his skin like this. As Alec nears the Institute, his sister at his side, he finds that he can’t quite remember the look of the woman. The details are blurred at the edges and he shakes his head, impatient.

By the time he gets to his room and draws a locking rune mechanically, he doesn’t remember the woman at all.

When he falls into bed that night, the afternoon is a hazy memory that he can’t quite grab onto. Sleep drags him under and with it the dreams come. There’s a man that calls out _Alexander_ in hushed, reverent tones and a fire in the background that burns in twisting shades of black and white.

 

Alec relaxes in his seat. It’s a sunny summer morning and for the first time in days, the tension bleeds out of his shoulders. If it’s not one thing it’s another and Alec is so fucking tired of Jace and his mother and the whole damned world that he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

One of the new recruits had almost gotten themselves killed last night and as Alec takes a bracing sip of his coffee, he wonders what it’d be like.

Shadowhunters reconcile death with life before they take their first runes. Alec’s always been willing to die for the cause, the raison d’etre that all shadowhunters were made to shoulder but that doesn't stop him from wondering about the _after_. 

This sidewalk cafe is cheerful and worlds away from the dank oppression of the shadow world but Alec wonders that it hasn’t tainted his very skin. He might be the Head of the Institute and he might have found his own form of sunlight in one Magnus Bane but he wonders if it’s all meant to last or if it’s just a temporary reprieve.

Lost in his thoughts, Alec doesn’t realize that someone’s sitting across from him until he hears the tap of a cane against the concrete. He looks up and immediately freezes.

The man looks familiar but not in a way that he can pin down. It seems like he’s shrouded in shadows, even when the sun shines brightly down on them both and Alec feels an uneasy scratch between his shoulders.

“What do you want,” he asks and shifts subtly for his glamoured blade.

The man chuckles. It’s warm but fills Alec with warning. He has a flash of memory-- a psychic in Lower Manhattan-- but it’s gone almost before it’s formed.

He doesn’t answer and Alec doesn’t press. The man is attractive if perfectly nondescript. He’s dressed plainly but in well-tailored clothes and Alec can’t pin down his accent, no matter that he’s toured institutes on every continent.

Continuing to tap his cane, the man looks thoughtful. “It’s not what I want, I assure you,” he finally says.

His gaze focuses on Alec’s and whatever Alec sees makes the breath shudder in his chest.

It’s awareness. It’s knowledge that Alec can never hope to have and he wonders who the hell the man in front of him is.

“And what is it that you don’t want,” Alec asks. His tone might be perfectly perfunctory but that doesn’t mean that his mouth isn’t dry as seven devils.

The man stares at him with amused eyes before he chuckles. “I want you to go back to wherever you came from. I want you to release your greedy little grasp on what’s mine. But alas,” he sighs before staring shrewdly at Alec. “It’s not meant to be and I just have to bide my time.”

He says those last words like they’re vile little things, like he’d rather kill a dozen men than wait futilely on the sidelines.

“Who are you,” Alec asks, pulse thrumming against his throat. He takes a lingering sip of his coffee to hide how unnerved he is but can see the way the man’s eyes focus on his barely trembling fingers.

“You don’t know who I am?” The question is sneering with the faintest hint of bite. Alec thinks he sees the man’s eyes flash before they’re the same pedestrian brown as before. The rhythmic tempo of the cane stops. In the silence, their eyes clash and distantly Alec swears he hears the sound of dull roaring and the shriek of blade against blade.

“You’ll know who I am soon enough, shadowhunter. Until that day, I’ll remind you of our past encounter. You have a choice to make and I will only offer my assistance once. I know you, you see,” he taunts softly. “You would blow up the very ground you stand upon to save those you love and someone new has wriggled their way into your good graces.”

“We’ve met before? Funny how I don’t remember you.” Alec’s voice whips through the air, quiet yet contemptuous. He doesn’t know who the man in front of him but he doesn’t like his gall. Alec is made of sterner stuff than a strange man crying out dire warnings.

As though he can read Alec’s mind, the man smiles but it’s cold and forbidding. “All in due time, young nephilim.” His expression morphs suddenly into something hungry and devastating. “Want to know a secret, Alexander?”

Recoiling at the name, Alec studies the stranger with new eyes. _What the hell?_

The man leans close and raises his cane to tip Alec’s chin up. “One day, you’ll come to me to save him and I will do it-- for the right price. We’ll see what happens on that fateful day.”

Standing, the man starts walking away. Unbidden, Alec can’t help but call out to the retreating figure as ice crawls up his back.

“Who the hell are you and why should I believe a damned thing you have to say?”

The man stills before he looks over his shoulder. “I’m your fate, dear Lightwood. Time will tell whether you’ll thank me or curse my very existence. Sweet dreams, boy.”

With that, he turns back and resumes his retreat. Alec looks down with a shuddering breath but glances up a split second later only to freeze.

The man has vanished between one step and the next and Alec can’t find him no matter how long he studies the people around him.

Settling back in his chair, Alec reaches for his coffee with shaking hands. The man, the things he said-- Alec doesn't know what to think.

Standing, he leaves a tip for the waitress and walks away from the cafe in a daze, coffee unfinished and sunny day ruined.

He sees shadows wherever he looks and wonders what the fuck just happened. Heading to the loft, he takes a shower, feeling distinctly if stupidly unclean, and thanks the angel that Magnus is out on house calls for the day.

He spends most of the day thinking about the man and how he could have known his name. His taunting premonitions make Alec’s skin crawl but Christ if he knows what to do about it. However, there’s a piece of him that isn’t justifiably creeped out-- there’s something in him that yearns to know more, wants to reach for whatever that man is alluding to but damned if he knows why.

Resolutely, he decides the man had been mad, had been rambling and looking for a willing ear. Nothing else makes sense and Alec feels the beginning of a headache every time he tries to pull everything together.

He falls into bed in the warm afternoon sunshine and surrenders to sleep almost immediately. In his dreams, he smells the fires of the damned and feels tears on his cheeks as he accepts an offer in a sure, steadfast voice.

 

 _This is a nightmare_ , he thinks a little wildly. 

Magnus is weak, he’s fading and aging and there’s not a good goddamned thing Alec can do for him.

Well. That’s not true.

He remembers a man with flashing eyes and an ebony cane. As he looks into Magnus’s face, into gold irises with slit pupils, everything comes crashing over Alec and his knees almost give out at the realization.

“Asmodeus,” he whispers and it’s like he’s been summoned, like he’s just been waiting for Alec to utter his name.

“Alexander.”

The Institutes alarms are sounding off but Alec doesn’t pay them any mind. He hears frantic knocking on his office door but all he can focus on is the two men in his office.

Magnus, his boyfriend, writhing on the ground as his eyes roll back in his head.

Asmodeus, leaning negligently against his desk, that damned cane resting under stacked hands. He observes the tableau in front of him with apathy but even in his devastation, Alec sees satisfaction gleaming in his eyes.

Leaning over Magnus, Alec looks up at Asmodeus. “Magnus needs his magic back.”

His voice is quiet with a hint of desperation lingering under the words. Asmodeus smiles.

“I can give him what he needs,” he says easily. “Whatever I’ve taken is just as easily replenished.”

Pausing, he studies Alec for a few moments. “My help comes with a price, though, young shadowhunter. Are you--”

“Do it.”

He looks taken aback but his eyes are unsurprised. “You haven’t heard my terms, Alexander.”

“Then why don’t you tell me them so I can agree,” Alec grits out.

Chuckling, Asmodeus complies. “Very well, then.” 

He’s still leaning carelessly on Alec’s desk and Magnus is still losing his fucking life in front of him and the Institute’s alarms are still raising bloody hell. With a wave of his hand, the alarms silence in the office and the sudden quiet is stark. Alec hears Magnus’s labored breathing and the crackle of his fireplace. He looks up and when he meets Asmodeus’s eyes, he stills for a moment.

Gold eyes stare back at him, at once threat and salvation.

“I will give my son his magic back. I will make him hale and whole again-- you, however,” he trails off. His smile this time is cruel and cuts to the quick. “You I will make immortal. You will remain one of your dreaded kind but you will never age and you will never die. You will forever remain as you are-- tied to Magnus, _to me_ , and I will watch as you grow bitter and resentful. That is the price, shadowhunter. That is what I will take in exchange for saving your love’s life.”

Opening his mouth, Alec doesn’t get a chance to say anything before Magnus is clawing at his arm. Looking down, Alec’s heart feels flayed open.

“Alexander,” Magnus mutters. “Don’t do it. Don’t make this deal, not for me. You don’t know what he’s asking, darling. You don’t know what he’s capable of-- _do not accept.”_

Magnus ends his entreaty with a pleading look but as Alec studies his boyfriend, he’s reminded of the quiet confession he’d made all those weeks ago.

 _I don’t think I can live without you_.

He sees his heart in Magnus’s eyes and knows that his choice is hardly a choice at all.

Leaning down, he lays the softest of kisses on Magnus’s lips. He’s still now, laying on the ground with tears and fatal acceptance swimming in his eyes.

“I love you, Magnus.”

Magnus closes his eyes at the whispered admission. Without opening, he replies in a hoarse voice, “I love you too, Alexander.”

It’s the hardest thing that Alec’s ever done, standing from Magnus when he’s hurt, when he goes limp in exhaustion and pain as the loss of his magic ravages his body from the inside out.

He does it, though, and isn't ashamed when his own tears spill over. Alec stands and sways on his feet. Swallowing hard, he straightens and takes a single step towards Asmodeus, who’s watching him with amused eyes.

“I will only ask once, Alexander. Do you accept the terms of my deal?”

“Yes.”

It seems like the ground shakes and Asmodeus finally pulls away from the desk. He pulls out a vial from his jacket and holds it up so that it catches the late afternoon light. It’s pitch black, dark as hell, and it’s another piece of dreamscape returned to him.

“A deal is a deal, shadowhunter.”

In the time that it takes for Alec to reach out and take the vial, he relives a million memories and mourns a thousand deaths. He’s sure, though. He’s never been so sure of anything in his life. Anything is worth saving Magnus and that’s a conviction that Alec knows will never fade-- not with all the time in the world.

Uncorking the vial, he takes one last look at Magnus before switching his gaze to Asmodeus. It’s almost to his lips before he abruptly pulls it back, Asmodeus watching him with a faint smile.

“How,” he asks. “Why.”

Sighing, Asmodeus studies him and Alec feels his eyes linger on his deflect rune, on the necklace that was a gift from his son.

“There have been rumbling for millennia about the shadowhunter child that would aspire to immortality. It wasn’t until you were born, though, that angels and demons alike knew the fated nephilim had arrived,” he says thoughtfully. He looks at Alec with shrewd eyes. “I see all, young shadowhunter. I know future as well as past and I could see the connection that would form between you and mine.”

He laughs but it’s sardonic. “Those dreams were a way to reach you, to test your loyalty. You’ve always been so strong,” he marvels mockingly. “You dealt with the dreams and I could feel the yearning in you. I knew it was only a matter of time until circumstances pressed your hand and I vowed to be there when it did.”

“Why,” Alec manages. “Why do you care so much?”

“Don’t you see, Alexander? Immortality is as much gift as curse. There will come a day when you look at Magnus and all you can see is what you gave up. It may take a little while but I’m a patient man and we have all the time in the world to watch your love turn to seething hatred.”

Trailing off, Asmodeus takes a step closer to Alec who refuses to move an inch, no matter how much he wants to recoil. Asmodeus doesn’t stop until he’s standing right in front of Alec and then he grasps Alec’s chin in thin fingers that possess an iron grip.

“And when that day comes,” he continues softly. “I will welcome my prodigal son to Edom with open arms. You see, Alexander Gideon Lightwood, you are my way back to my son and nothing matters as much to me as _him.”_

He jerks his chin to Magnus who doesn’t even look aware of the exchange as he sweats through his waistcoat and the breath rattles in his chest.

Asmodeus pulls his head back until they’re staring into each other’s eyes. “I might save him but it’s not for you. You are nothing but a passing diversion. I am the one constant in Magnus’s life and I will stand next to him long after the very sight of him turns your stomach.”

The breath shudders out of Alec’s chest and he swallows hard. “That will never happen,” he vows in a low tone. “I will never give up on Magnus and _I will never let him return to you_. He is mine and I am his and nothing in this goddamned universe will ever change that.”

He spits out the last of it before turning his back to Asmodeus. As he stares at the fire roaring under the mantle, he brings the vial up to to his lips and throws it viciously back.

The screams start immediately.

Falling to his knees, Alec doesn’t feel the impact onto the granite floor. On all fours, his head hangs low and he tries to make himself as small as possible as pain radiates through every bone and organ and blood cell.

All he knows is pain, all he can hear is his own screaming voice, already growing hoarse. Looking down, he watches as his veins turn black and he wonders if it all wasn’t just a trick by the most powerful prince of hell.

He falls on his front, splayed in front of the fireplace and distantly watches as Asmodeus makes his way over to Magnus. He sees the way he kneels before Magnus’s side and the way crimson magic soaks into his boyfriend’s prone form.

The last thing he sees before it feels like his very soul gives out is Magnus waking in Asmodeus’s arms with blue wisps of magic curling around his arms.

 

He dreams. There’s a man with gold eyes that represent home and a world that’s far different than any he’s ever known.

He watches from afar as everything changes time and time again, the one constant the man beside him and the love that flares bright and high between them.

 

He wakes and in this new consciousness feels reborn.

He’s free and he’s taken and when he hears a hushed, reverent, _“Alexander,”_ in a voice he’d know anywhere, he knows he’s safe.

Alec opens his eyes and stares at Magnus, at the rest of his life, and promises both heaven and hell that he’ll hang on to this with everything he is and everything that he will ever be.

**Author's Note:**

> Shamdon is another name for Asmodeus, by the way!
> 
> catch me on tumblr or twitter @carmenlire :)


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